Installation

Here I would like to make a specific mention of Noctua's SecuFirm2 mounting system. This might be the most effortless mounting system I've used, and the spring loaded screw enables very high pressures, but it prevents the possibility of over tightening, and also prevents the pressure from bending or potentially damaging the motherboard. Easy breezy installation heaven, fantastic design enabling functionality while still being user friendly.

Testing

Idle Testing

For idle testing, we booted up the system, allowed the CPU to stabilized at below 2% usage, and then tested for 10 minutes, and we used RealTemp to record the CPU temperatures.

Noctua NH-C12P SE14 Noctua NH-C14

Load Testing

For our load tests, we used Prime95 to stress the CPU to 100%, and let it run that way for one hour, and then use RealTemp to record the temperatures

Noctua NH-C12P SE14 Noctua NH-C14

Overclock Testing

Using the same methods as before for idle and load except with a 25% Overclock, (3.3GHz, up from 2.66GHz stock)

Idle

Noctua NH-C12P SE14 Noctua NH-C14

Load

Noctua NH-C12P SE14 Noctua NH-C14

Results

If you look at our review of Noctua's own NH-C12P SE14, you will see that it's an impressive cooler... and the NH-C14 absolutely dominates it in every respect. This is a testament to Noctua's high performance engineering, and their ability to take a great product and make it even better.

The idle temps were awesomely low, and the load temperatures beat the NH-C12P SE14 by a vast 4°C. Even more impressively is that the overall load temperatures on a 25% overclock only increased by a measly 1 degree! This is 7°C better than our comparison cooler, and this cooler should be able to take an overclock to ridiculous levels for a top-flow cooler. The numbers truly speak for themselves, and not much more I can say can further how impressive this cooler has performed!

I must also make note that this outstanding performance was achieved with little audible increases in the noise of the case above the case's fans. Noctua's NF-P14 fans move a ton of air over this cooler, and do so with little more than a "whisper."